A Non-Profit Discovers Its Soulful Purpose™
This past weekend we facilitated a strategy session for the board of directors of a local non-profit. Our major objective was to create a greater level of engagement among the board (especially among its large percentage of new members) and to focus their efforts on their number one challenge—funding. Most facilitators would have focused on [...]
Thoughts on Innovation vs. Branding Strategy
A post over at The Blake Project’s blog discusses the issue of a a strategy based on Innovation, vs a Branding strategy. The author, in my opinion, sets up a strawman argument as to what an innovation strategy is (using The Sharper Image as an example), and then goes on to extol the value of [...]
Are you truly engaging your employees?
One of the most frequently asked questions we get is, how do we truly get our employees really engaged? “Employee Engagement” is the latest hot topic in management circles but the statistics show that we are not doing a very good job. According to a recent article by Bob Donovan of Chief Executive Magazine, “only [...]
Marketing is a Many-Splendored Thing…
Set Godin’s blog post today – “Which comes first, the product or the marketing?” touches on a subject near and dear to my heart. In fact, it’s a “soapbox” issue for me, in that I find myself elaborating on a daily basis regarding the many different aspects and disciplines falling under the marketing umbrella. Seth’s [...]
The Living Organization & The Physics of Business – A Personal Perspective
In his recent post, Norman described The Living Organization model as the conceptual framework for understanding the physics of energy flows within organizations and between organizations and their environments. This model – which is in a state of ongoing evolution – is the result of years of Norman’s own experience as a business leader. [...]
Are You Experienced…
…have you ever been experienced? There’s been a lot of discussion over recent years as to the notion that the nature of the U.S. economy is transforming (yet again) from that of being primarily a service economy into an experience economy. This theory was first laid out by Pine and Gilmore in their book, “The [...]
Story-Telling: What Every Good Marketer Knows…
Seth Godin has reposted a list of insights and best marketing practices on his blog. I suggest you read (and save) his entire post as it is a manifesto on what 21st Century marketing should be. Four of his points relate to the importance of story-telling in marketing: Good marketers tell a story. Effective stories [...]
Marketing ROI?….Picking Up The Gauntlet
In his last post on The Challenge of Investing in People, Norm likened the current skepticism of many business leaders re “people investment” to that of the view of marketing 20+ years ago. He went on to state: And still today no one has yet come up with a way of tying marketing dollars into [...]
“Sincerity is Everything…..
…and once you can fake that, you’ve got it made!” So runs the old joke, and unfortunately, I’m am seeing the embodiment of this cynical approach in some circles regarding the use…no, make that the manipulation/exploitation of social media. Am mostly seeing this attitude evidenced in the domains of traditional marketing communications and public relations [...]
A Contrarian View of Influencer-based Marketing
There’s a commonly accepted view that the key to viral-based trend-setting in both B-to-B and B-to-C environments is the identification and cultivation of so-called key influencers or “hubs” in the prevailing social networks related to your targeted marketing environments. Books such as The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell and The Influentials, by Ed Keller and [...]
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